All the stuff you never knew you needed to know about life in rural France.....and all the stuff the books and magazines won't tell you.

Sunday, 25 November 2012

Eurovision it's not...

Something like this used to announce European events...like the Eurovision Song Contest...nul points...before the bloated functionaries of the EU decided to pervert Beethoven's Ode to Joy to celebrate their ascension to the gravy train...

The reports of the last budget session made me wonder if the EU leaders were living in a land through the Looking Glass...cuts to the budget for cross national transport, development and broadband accessibility...to let the French keep their farm subsidies....and the EU bureaucrats their perks.

I would like to have the modern version of these camped on the lawns of the Berlimont building in Brussels...

And then we'd see a new blitzkreig!

Which is to say that I'm off to Europe for a few weeks...back to the old country...back to intermittent internet access..back to bureaucracy on the grand scale....back to mad taxes....gin eand ear trumpet work with mother...and some super meetings with fellow bloggers!

I will try to keep up with your blogs but please forgive me if I cannot comment....

No! Ode to Joy is a ukulele anthem. The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain play it as the finale to all their concerts and everyone brings their ukes and joins in. The EU anthem? I'm horrified. A hex on them all. Have a good trip!

It's the broadacre farming subsidies that are the biggest problem, encouraging more and more landscape scale monoculture. These big farmers have immense political punch, and are prepared to play dirty, unlike the conservationists who are lobbying to reform the CAP. The Grassland Indicator Species may be plummeting, but wheat farmers think they don't need them, so a few tiny token prairies will be fenced off, with great trumpeting to announce how interested in biodiversity the authorities are.

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About Me

Retired, I'd lived in France for about twenty years after leaving the U.K.
Tired of listening to the 'living the dream' nonsense, tired of people shooting my rooks, I thought it was time to spill some beans from the cassoulet.
And having spilled the beans, I'm starting on the rice...out here in Costa Rica.